ṣöṳṯḣ ḋāḵöṯā

Day 5

We woke up and played "tourist."

So our vacation started off with losing sleep... camping doesn't generally help you catch up on that lost sleep. But the camping conditions were near perfect and about as good as it gets!

Wake up!! 

Mount Rushmore National Memorial.
We were camping about 2 miles away...not too shabby! Riley and Reece are in this picture...Jake too. Just a beautiful, surreal atmosphere.

Riley might be waking up!

The artist/sculptor that lead the way in the creation of the monument. Mind boggling to think dynamite can be so precisely used to create faces in the side of a mountain.

FYI: President Jefferson was the author of the first ice cream recipe in America. It was our patriotic duty to eat some overpriced ice cream on this day!

We had to find our current state of dwelling.

And we are always Kansas proud.
(unless Sam Brownback is the topic ;)
Riley, Reece and my birthplace. Yay, Jayhawkers!

And Jake's birth state...not sure what he would be called.

Silly Reece. Poor Abe...mom may have put him up this this...

You may see this same picture just from a hundred different angles. You've been warned...It's just so amazing! 

Selfie stick awesomeness! I'm pretty sure I'm on my tippy toes here...Riley is growing like a weed!

I just LOVE this picture! 

Jake got the famous Thomas Jefferson vanilla ice cream recipe. He approves! ;)

Just putting the size into perspective for you... it's no big deal. Haha!

Next up... CrAzY HoRsE!

This was a very different memorial. I love the story and history behind it...but I'm baffled at the fact that they have been working on this for nearly 70 YEARS!! Mt. Rushmore took 14 years! I get the lower funding, anti government help/money, and I'm sure not nearly the same number of workers. But 70 years to only have a face and a tunnel.
This is the letter from "Standing Bear" to the artist/sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski asking him to help honor Crazy Horse.

Standing Bear.

You can see the outline of the horse's head if you look closely.

I'm positive I will not live to see this project complete... what's amazing is this is considerably larger than the Mt. Rushmore memorial. It didn't seem like it when there, but we watched a great video when we first arrived and the size difference was huge!

There was a tiny memorial for 9/11 ... I wasn't expecting that.

Crazy horse... there was no known photograph of him. How crazy is that?

I was glad to see this picture... I'm very visual person.
I think my beef with this memorial is where the money is going. Upon arrival we paid $28 for our carload (Mt. Rushmore was $11...and that pass is good for a full year.) The money wasn't a big deal...You then go to a massive visitor center. There were some amazing artifacts and so much history in these walls, which were great...but it makes me go hmmmm. How much money did they dump into this center that could have gone into this slow moving project??? I get you want people to come, but I assume they whether you had a massive visitor center or a tiny visitor center. It's just mind boggling...again, this project is nearing 70 years, so I left confused. I enjoyed it, but my mind had a hard time wrapping around the process, curious if money was truly managed wisely. Oh well... it was another great experience!

It got pretty warm, Reece couldn't wait to get in the lake. He was nervous because no one else wanted to get in with him.

After a quick dip, we went into the nearest town, Keystone, SD and walked around for a bit.
This was a pizza shop... Riley was a fan of the name!

That night we decided to head back to Mt. Rushmore to check it out at night... we got a treat! We arrived right in time for the nightly ceremony that we didn't even know took place. The amphitheater was incredible and the crowd was huge. We got to watch a short film about why these 4 presidents were chosen. The end of the film was "America the Beautiful" and "The National Anthem" which when they finally turned the lights on (poor picture quality in the dark.) It was such a moving experience...but it only got better. 

At that point they invited all of the current/former service men and women to gather on the stage... they went through and let everyone give their name and unit. So special! It was such an incredible ending to an incredible day!